Executive Briefings

Survey research from Saugatuck Technology shows that 65 percent or more of all new business application decisions in the enterprise will be cloud-based or hybrid by YE2014. Any business application of any complexity and criticality can and should be considered for SaaS, and ISVs that still hesitate to develop and provide SaaS versions of their business software are about to be left behind. The challenge
for software vendors is no longer about when to include or even shift entirely to SaaS and other Cloud-based solutions. The time is now. The challenge is how to make that happen.

In particular, ISVs consider Windows Azure to be a creative platform for new business capabilities. However, Azure is a moving target. Saugatuck has studied the Windows Azure platform in depth over the past 24 months, has been briefed by Microsoft extensively and has interviewed ISVs and
global systems integrators (SIs) that have migrated or built nearly 150 SaaS solutions on the Windows Azure platform.

This paper discusses what key research findings regarding ISVs, Windows Azure and the cloud, focusing especially on works in Azure and the best way to leverage its capabilities.